Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [277]
For how long, thought Nicolas de Nicolay, had Graham Malett longed to do just this thing? For twelve long months Lymond had held out against him. For a year he had resisted the mightiest blandishments known to man; returned all Gabriel’s advances with raillery; obstructed all Graham Malett’s confident plans and finally, shown a courage and a stamina under constant, devious attack that must have maddened this great god of a man, so contemptuous of his fellows.
And through it all until now, neither man had betrayed his true mind. Rather than spread this evil, Lymond had fought it himself, until he had the means to destroy it. And only now, secure in his triumph, borne on this wave of hatred, of drunken emotion so neatly pre-formed, with Lymond’s standing here at St Mary’s almost totally destroyed and the Queen Dowager’s wrath pending—only now was Sir Graham able, in public, to void some of his impotent anger in open chastisement.
Contentedly, the whip whined and thudded until, at last, Graham Malett had what he wanted. The immunity broke, or could hold out no longer. When Gabriel’s next, careful blow fell Lymond moved, in spite of himself, his face suddenly taut, and Gabriel, his lips drawn back in the smile known throughout the Christian world, increased at once the speed of his blows.
From then on, the progression was routine: were you a man of iron, you could not avoid it. The recoil, in silence, that could no longer be controlled; the shuddering intake of breath which was all one’s mechanism could contrive between each blind onslaught of pain … the nausea and the dizziness, coming more and more often, and cured, sharply and drowningly, by shrewdly applied pails of cold water, coursing down, meddling curiously with the exposed red sponge of one’s back.
It was then that Joleta was ill, and Jerott, saying “That’s enough!’ seized Gabriel’s iron arm and got, for his pains, the thonged lash full over the face.
Jerott fell back gasping, his hand over his cheek. He saw that the blow had been perfectly automatic, that Gabriel was hardly more conscious of it than if he had brushed off a gnat. And to a chorus of harrowing groans, some encouraging, some mellowly pained, Graham Malett, his fine face all suffused, turned back to the post, and raising his arm, with all his might brought down the thong, again and again, on his enemy’s back.
That was what Philippa Somerville saw when she rode in Blacklock’s arms out of the darkness, out of the rain that had begun, patteringly, to hiss on the torches and drum on the paving and on the pewter and on the soiled leather shoulders of the shouting, gesticulating figures before the big castle, in the crowded courtyard blazing with lights; and on the central, superb figure of Gabriel, all-powerful, unflagging, avenging his wrongs.
She jumped from Adam’s pithless embrace and, like a decapitated hen, ran squawking straight for the post.
Through all the noise and the pain, Lymond must have heard her. He opened his eyes and Jerott, released from an icy limbo of shock followed their direction and lunging, scooped the screaming girl into his arms. ‘What the hell are you doing here? He’s seduced Joleta, that’s what’s wrong. Get back into the.…’
And then he realized what she was saying.
Gabriel, too, had heard it. His hand arrested, he seemed to freeze where he stood, an awakening horror on his face. Then Graham Malett fell back, staring, to where Jerott and Philippa stood, and stammered, ‘What have I done? Jerott.… Oh, God, it is a spreading evil. I think its spores have entered us all.…’
But he was looking at Philippa, and Philippa, her lips trembling, her mouse-brown hair plastered in mouse-brown streaks on her neck, was recounting at last the secret that old Trotty Luckup had confided, in gratitude for all his past favours, to Tom Erskine as he died. She had told him knowing that Jamie Fleming